Apparently taking a page out of this month's advertising debate between AT&T and Verizon, Canadian carrier Telus has sued Rogers Communications for ads claiming that the Rogers wireless network is "the fastest and most reliable in the country." Telus and Bell Canada have of course just launched their new, $1 billion HSPA network, which offers speeds up to 21 Mbps to Canadian customers. As such, Telus demanded earlier this month that Rogers stop making advertising claims that they held the 3G speed edge -- a request Rogers ignored, since they too offer 21 Mbps HSPA+ service. "Telus has not submitted any data on their network performance and we look forward to vigorously defending our position in court," says Rogers.

Calling it "the most significant technology announcement for the company in 25 years," Bell Canada CEO George Cope says the company will launch its HSPA wireless broadband network on Wednesday. The $1 billion network was built in conjunction with Telus, who says they'll launch their implementation of the network on Thursday. The new HSPA service will reach about 93% of the Canadian population, and offer speeds up to 21 Mbps (if anyone has pricing, drop us a line). Speaking of this week's decision by the CRTC to block access of a new carrier for not being Canadian enough, Cope proclaimed that "no one would be mistaken that there is not new competition coming to the Canadian wireless industry" (sic).

The CRTC earlier this year couldn't be bothered to come to the defense of independent ISPs facing extinction due to Bell Canada's sudden throttling efforts, but the regulatory agency amazingly came alive this week to stop the entry of a new wireless phone competitor in Canada. A CRTC ruling has banned Globalive, a new entrant into the Canadian market, from doing business in Canada.

Users in our Telus forum indicate that the Canadian operator is in the process of informing employees they're being let go, though so far posters seem to indicate the layoffs are being restricted to just clerical and management positions. The company announced some 100 managerial layoffs back in December, stating that no new layoffs were foreseen.

User en102 writes in to note that Bell Canada and Telus (both currently CDMA 1x/EVDO carriers in Canada) plan to overlay their networks with UMTS/HSPA networks, and ultimately embrace LTE. The shift will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and is estimated to be completed by 2010. AT&T, who here in the States is also embracing HSPA to LTE, says they've got speeds faster than 7Mbps working in the labs, and hopes to offers consumers speeds of 20Mbps by 2010. Meanwhile up north, Bell Canada and Telus are trying to compete with Rogers, who has a several year start in deploying GSM/HSPA technology.

At some point during the last decade, someone redefined "unlimited" to mean "very limited" and didn't bother to inform the folks at Merriam Webster. There's been no shortage of telecom companies that offer an "unlimited" service, only to turn around and tell you their marketing department was just kidding.

I've had roughly a dozen people submit this report (slow to load) that claims Canadian phone companies Telus and Bell Canada are planning to start charging customers extra to access certain websites by 2012. Given Telus's previous history of blocking their customers from accessing websites Telus didn't agree with, and the fact their wireless service already essentially does this, it almost sounds plausible.